Wasteland 2 - Post-Funding Update# 34

August 29th, 2013, 17:37

I disagree, Fallout 1 & 2 weren't blockbusters and reused assets everywhere, yet still managed to make open areas full of "life". Take an area like the Gecko entrance in F2:

It's very small and has no unique art assets besides the Powerplant walls, yet it's very rich in ambiance and it's also logical. You have some houses, that you can all break in and loot, some people walking around, plantations, a well, an even a bar where you can chat and play Tragic.

It may be way smaller and have less quests than the W2 area, yet it has more non-quest stuff to do, far more memorable and obviously was cheaper to make.

I would most definitely not expect Baldur's gate or fallout here (I wish), considering the budget and time of development. This will probably be more IWD than anything else.

That said they have promised a degree of non-linearity and open endedness at least in the way you go through the world and the main/side quests. There are also CnC and different ways to solve quests/approach a problem.

This is a demo meant to show off certain features not actual final gameplay so I am holding out hope that the final product will be less "sterile" and more populated.

I am already seeing something quite a bit more involved and RPG like than the last Kickstarter game I backed so lets wait and see how this turns out…

Originally Posted by felipepepe
I think the problem is deeper… obviously they didn't show all the areas, but they do seem to have done everything in the areas shown in the video… this means that all you can do at the Gas Station is crack that safe and listen to the broadcast, for example.

It shows a really shallow design, very "Theme Park-like", with various paths leading to places were you do event and thats it. Fallout and Baldur's Gate have open areas, full of people and places, that you explore and end up finding stuff to do. Here they are thrown upon you, and there is nothing to do besides them. This is supposed to be a residential area, yet there is not a single non-quest-related NPC, no one walking around, nothing going on besides quests.

Have you replayed BG lately? It's full of areas with basically nothing in them, it's just a chore to walk around every map trying to find the quests and encounters on them. WL2 look pretty damn good to me (Fallout might be in another league though, but I'm not sure yet, I will actually have to plat WL2 before I can make a proper verdict. And play it I will…)

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
Have you replayed BG lately? It's full of areas with basically nothing in them, it's just a chore to walk around every map trying to find the quests and encounters on them. WL2 look pretty damn good to me (Fallout might be in another league though, but I'm not sure yet, I will actually have to plat WL2 before I can make a proper verdict. And play it I will…)

There is middle ground between empty areas with nothing and linear paths to every quest… Baldur's Gate II reached that point quite well, as did Fallout, Arcanum, Morrowind and many others.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I find it pretty amazing that you know all this about a game you haven't played.

I'm not talking about the entire game, but about this demo area. We just saw 18 minutes of someone exploring it, I think that's enough to have a opinion on that area.

And my opinion is that it's a linear, theme park design. Think about how many times you re-visit places in Fallout, even a small area like Gecko. I don't see how that can happen with W2. Once the sick woman quest is done, you'll never again walk that path again, that area of the map just died.

Originally Posted by felipepepe
There is middle ground between empty areas with nothing and linear paths to every quest… Baldur's Gate II reached that point quite well, as did Fallout, Arcanum, Morrowind and many others.

I'm not talking about the entire game, but about this demo area. We just saw 18 minutes of someone exploring it, I think that's enough to have a opinion on that area.

And my opinion is that it's a linear, theme park design. Think about how many times you re-visit places in Fallout, even a small area like Gecko. I don't see how that can happen with W2. Once the sick woman quest is done, you'll never again walk that path again, that area of the map just died.

I agree with you that the style of Fallout map you showed earlier in the thread is preferable compared to corridor-like-maps that lead you directly to events/NPCs/quests. But then again, how do we know if this demo is indicative of how most of W2's areas will be laid out?

I'm not sure how I feel. I suppose a little disappointed. I got a really good vibe from the first vid about the killer plants. I'm not sure if I like how it turned out. Now is the time, however, to speak up and ask for changes before it's too late.

The first video seemed much more polished and good looking. I don't know what happened here.

The desert colors are bad. Too cartoony. Too much yellow also, in general. Why is there so much yellow, not only in the screens, but in the interface too? Is yellow the favorite color of someone who chooses the dominant colors or something? Yellow, yellow, everywhere!

Does there have to be something triggering or an encounter going on every time you walk 5 feet?? There seemed no "room to roam". How about some areas where it is just mostly empty wilderness/desert to explore?

I get a very cheesy feeling from some of the radio transmissions and just in general. Can the cheese factor be cut down a bit? Maybe make the atmosphere more serious, not so cheesy?

This is a turn based combat game with lots of options - I see it as more like XCom, JA etc. except with more RPG elements and with larger maps rather than individual missions. If it works out something like that, I'll be happy.

You can't easily make this sort of thing work in an open world exploring game as the devs need more control over the encounters to make them engaging. A lot of the complaints many of us have about Elder Scrolls games, for instance, are related to their freedom causing gameplay problems that couldn't be anticipated by the devs, hence the scaling (particularly in Oblivion), poor itemisation etc. that detracts from those games.

But seriously, I'm not offending or attacking anyone, just posting my opinion on the video they showed. I'd love for someone to prove me wrong and show glorious things to reignite my expectations for W2, but so far all I heard is "maybe the full game will be better"…

Hexes, squares, I don't really care, as long as the combat is good/challenging/fun. JA2 was squares and that's the best of the bunch. Xcom was squares (old & new) and those are probably the next best. Wasteland 1 was squares, ok, that I just threw in for laughs but it is true. What TBS/RPG am I missing here that was so superior because it had hexes? The new Kings Bounty(s)? Good games but very isolated and constrained combat areas separate from the world and it sure wasn't the hexes that made their combat fun.

I think the graphics are just fine. They're all I was hoping for, this isn't a $20 million title. Compare it to the new xcom, xcom looked cleaner but honestly didn't have a ton of detail either, very simple environments and textures and that only had like 15 tiny mission maps and a couple of alien bases with re-used art to do.

This is almost exactly what I had in mind when I backed it. It looks to me like it's shaping up great and I'm excited to play it.